"And you hadn't?"
"Well, I can't conceive how I could have had."
"You mean it seems so long ago."
"No, I don't mean that."
"You've forgotten."
"I don't mean that, either."
Silence.
"Look here, Anne, I want to know about Colin. Has he been very bad?"
"Yes, he has."
"How bad?"
"So bad that sometimes I was glad you weren't there to see him. You
remember when he was a kid, how frightened he used to be at night. Well,
he's been like that all the time. He's like that now, only he's a bit
better. He doesn't scream now.... All the time he kept on worrying about
you. He only told me that the other day. He seemed to think the war must
have done something more frightful to you than it had done to him; he
said, because you'd mind it more. I told him it wasn't the sort of thing
you'd mind most."
"It isn't the sort of thing it's any good minding. I don't suppose I
minded more than the other chaps. If anything had happened to you, or
him, or Eliot, I'd have minded that."
"I know. That's what I told him. I knew you'd come through."
"Eliot was dead right about Colin. He knew he wouldn't. He ought never
to have gone out."
"He wanted so awfully to go. But Eliot could have stopped him if it
hadn't been for Queenie. She hunted and hounded him out. She told him he
was funking. Fancy Colin funking!"
"What's Queenie like?"
"She's like that. She never funks herself, but she wants to make out
that everybody else does."
"Do you like Queenie?"
"No. I hate her. I don't mind her hounding him out so much since she
went herself; I _do_ mind her leaving him. Do you know, she's never even
tried to come and see him."
"Good God! what a beast the woman must be. What on earth made him marry
her?"
"He was frightfully in love. An awful sort of love that wore him out and
made him wretched. And now he's afraid for his life of her. I believe
he's afraid of the war ending because then she'll come back."
"And if she does come back?"
"She may try and take Colin away from me. But she shan't. She can't take
him if he doesn't want to go. She left him to me to look after and I
mean to stick to him. I won't have him frightened and made all ill again
just when I've got him well."
"I'm afraid you've had a very hard time."
"Not so hard as you think."
She smiled a mysterious, quiet smile, as if she contemplated some happy
secret. He thought he knew it, Anne's secret.